


cursive

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Consensual Sex, Coronavirus, Dirty Talk, Escapism, F/M, I promise, Modern AU, Power Dynamics, They were QUARANTINED, and somewhat dominant gendry, angsty fluff smut, but also it's complicated, emotional messes to mop up, it all adds up to something happy, submissive sansa i guess?, they tried to do a one-night stand and failed in a big way, unreliable narrators, with an extra helping of angst and questionable choices
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: It was supposed to just be dinner. Then it turned into the end of the world.(Or, Gendry and Sansa are stuck together during the Coronavirus lockdown.)
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 137
Kudos: 238





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a wee diversion from my actual writing and my other fics and from the fact that I've been stuck in the same room for a week and a half. Cheers! I appreciate all comments and kudos in this strange hour.

**Gendry**

“And just remember that you can’t cancel, because it would completely, absolutely break Sansa’s heart, and the whole _point_ of this is to _repair_ her heart—”

“Arya.”

Gendry steers with one hand, squinting in the slick darkness at street signs. “Have you ever known me to cancel on anyone, to let anyone down—ever?”

There is a pause, because this bit is painful for both of them. She once knew him better than anyone, and now that time is over. It’s infuriating to him that Arya would imply (after all they’ve been through together) that he would ever cancel, or flake, or not follow through on a promise.

 _She_ is the one who didn’t follow through. Not him.

“Right.”

She clears her throat. “I know you don’t cancel on people like that. I don’t even know why I said it. This whole viral thing is making everything feel more urgent. I’m just worried about Sansa, is all.”

“Don’t know why you think I’m the cavalry. Sansa and I have bollocks in common.”

Gendry pulls to a stop in front of his home for the next six weeks. “I’ve got to go. Look, I promise I won’t cancel on Sansa,” he says into his mobile as he ducks his head and leans across the car to look out the passenger window, up at the tall, narrow house. The lights are on, and in the rain the golden light looks like chaos, not comfort. Good—that’s what he wants.

“Yeah, I know you won’t. Thanks for doing this.”

There’s another blistering pause—that moment where they used to say, _love you._ “Um. Bye,” Arya finally says, and Gendry cannot help but laugh (bitterly) into his mobile before ringing off.

He sits in his car for a moment, mulling over how much your life can change in the span of a few months.

(Everything is about to change in the span of less than two days. In a mere few days, he will look at his life now and be amused by the histrionics of his sense of upheaval now.)

Two duffle bags, one full of his art supplies and one full of hole-ridden, faded clothes sit in the boot of his shite car. His current life, of roaming from couch to couch, of tattoos and grungy trainers, of waking up soaked in grain alcohol and painting in a still-drunk frenzy, does not have much to do with Arya’s sister’s life. He only just was able to afford a mobile again—meanwhile, he’s never seen Sansa _not_ on her mobile.

She’s always so polite, of course, so she’s never looking at it when she’s talking to you, but it’s always a presence you can sense. You can see her mind drifting from the conversation to the little box of metal in her purse or her back pocket. It buzzes every second with comments and likes from the fans that keep her floating in keratin treatments and bottomless mimosa brunches and hundred-pound yoga leggings. Gendry has never taken a yoga class, he can’t afford brunch, and if he ever were to have an instagram, it would be an act of experimental art, heavy with irony: mouse-droppings on a formica counter; crumpled up bank notes (the last ones) to pay for weed; a snap of an ad for debt relief, flickering under fluorescent lighting on the Tube.

But now he lives near Sansa, as this artists’ neighborhood is becoming gentrified, and Arya is worried about her sister, and therefore it is somehow geographically his responsibility to help. And just like the old days, Gendry is still somehow absorbing all of Arya’s concerns and struggles. They are not together anymore, they are not living together anymore, they are not fucking anymore, and yet Arya still rules his life. He still reorganizes his life to better fit hers.

For a moment, Gendry sits in his shite car and fumes. There’s a lump in his throat as he looks around at his messy, cobbled-together life—the smoking ruins of a life that Arya so carelessly exploded. _We were going to_ have _something, we were going to_ be _something,_ he thinks, and he swallows the thick, hot, pulsing fury.

It’s been almost a year since he had to, shamefacedly, sell the diamond ring, and he thinks of it every time he gets into this crap car, as it’s the only way he was able to get this car. Since then he’s even lived in his car for periods of time, staring at its carpeted roof instead of sleeping, and thinking of how she fucked him over.

And even though she fucked him over, even though she humiliated him, he’s—for whatever reason—agreed to get dinner with her unbearably bougie sister.

His mobile pings with a message from Sansa Stark, as if she can sense the cosmos vibrating around her. Maybe she can. _Maybe it’s one of her Influencer superpowers,_ he thinks bitterly.

**_Sansa Stark: Hi, Gendry! Hope you’re well._ ** ****

Gendry snorts. He watches the three dots pop up and hover, for a very long time. She’s typing, and deleting, and typing. Or maybe one of her assistants is. Does she have assistants? She must. ****

**_Sansa Stark: I just wanted to say that if you need to cancel tomorrow night, I understand._ ** ****

**_Sansa Stark: Everything’s a bit crazy right now, and Arya mentioned you were moving._ **

**_Sansa Stark: She also said you’ve been doing a lot of gig work lately, and I wouldn’t want to interrupt your livelihood._ **

Gendry slumps in the seat and stares at his screen. When you’ve lived like he has, you learn to sort people into types. There are a number of categories, and they’re all driven by what people want and what they’re afraid of. Sansa offering him an out is strange, and he cannot decipher what would drive it.

What could Sansa Stark possibly want? What could Sansa Stark possibly fear?

He also knows himself really well. It comes with being independent—truly independent. You have to know all the little ugly thorns inside of you that your heart might catch on. You have to know what might make you bleed. And he knows a little secret about himself: his head always used to turn when Arya’s sister walked by.

Maybe that’s why he’s angry about this.

He’s not proud of it. He boils it down to superficial reasons that he won’t dwell on. He is a man, after all, and he isn’t blind. And besides, Sansa Stark has designed herself to turn heads—of course she would turn his.

But on the other hand, Gendry has designed _himself_ to be above things superficial and shallow, to live by his own rules, to answer to no one but himself.

(Except for that brief period of time that he answered to Arya. Idiotic, really.)

Gendry lives by his own rules, and he knows all of his little thorns. He’s not afraid of them. He knows what this is. Part of him wants Sansa Stark, and part of him is afraid of her. Part of him is still so angry at Arya, and at anyone who loves Arya, that he can’t see straight. Part of him is humiliated by her, and, drunk and high and sprawled on the floor with his paint, he has wondered what Arya’s family thinks of him. The poor starving artist. Poor Gendry. When he’s had access to a metal shop he’s let his rage fly through force and flame to shape metal. Poor Gendry. He didn’t go to any fancy schools; he doesn’t know how to ride horses; he doesn’t listen to fucking podcasts on the stock market. _Poor Gendry._ Of course he and Arya couldn't last.

They were all always so bloody nice, because they pitied him. And now Sansa Stark is pitying him. He tastes bile in his throat. No matter how low he gets, he will not be pitied.

**_Gendry: nah its cool_ ** ****

**_Gendry: where’d you have in mind_ ** ****

He exhales and sets his mobile down. He feels it ping with her reply.

 _Whatever,_ he thinks. _It’s just dinner._

**Sansa**

Maybe it’s a good thing that the world seems to be on the verge of ending. It takes her mind off of things, that’s for certain. Sansa lies awake on her unfamiliar mattress. It was gifted to her by one of the endless millennial brands that gifts her things, yet another brand with sans-serif font on a minimalist backsplash, its cool website promising an ethical and economical choice. The mattress is worth hundreds of pounds but she got it for free. She misses her old one, but now that she’s made a post about this one, extolling its virtues to the world, it feels wrong not to keep it.

Her mobile pings, endlessly, with updates from friends and fans and followers; with news updates; with anxious calls and texts from her mother. Yesterday, the virus seemed like a joke. Today, it has consumed everything, and it’s all anyone can talk about. Margaery sends her a Buzzfeed link—apparently the UK will be the next to be hit—and Rickon posts about his boxing class on Instagram, earning furious and worried comments from their extended family. He’s posing with a student in his class, sweaty and tattooed, giving a cheeky thumbs up. Her mother emails her an article on the most important organic staples to have in your pantry in case of food shortages. Mya texts her a link on why ‘herd immunity’ is bullshit, along with multiple paragraph-long texts editorializing her opinion.

And yet Sansa ignores all of these. There’s only one reason she’s checking her mobile, and at last when her mobile vibrates with the text she’s been waiting for, her fingers suddenly feel thick and her heart shudders beneath her ribs.

**_Gendry Waters: well whatever is cool with me_ **

**_Gendry Waters: listen I gotta go, moving into my new place_ ** ****

**_Gendry Waters: talk later_ ** ****

She holds her mobile and stares at the ceiling, her mouth dry.

It was always just a stupid, silly thing she had in her head—maybe it’s just because she always knew she could never have him. Gendry was always unattainable and there’s nothing she is so drawn to as an unreachable goal. Her life is a stairmaster of achievements; she never stops climbing and she is never done, but no matter how long she climbs she’ll never have Gendry.

She can remember, acutely, the first time she met Gendry. A summer holiday in Cornwall. The whole Stark clan. Watery sunlight, shining streets baking in the sun, late nights under twinkle lights—and her sister’s first and only boyfriend. Tattoos and a blistering blue gaze, kind but resentful, endearing but aloof. They brushed past each other when he was getting a beer, the night humid and fragrant and alive around her, and she had limply muttered to Margaery that she had a headache and had escaped to her room. In the blue heat of her bedroom she had pinned the door shut and, leaning against it, had desperately reached between her legs and found herself damp.

It had been hormones, she’d told herself. That night when her own boyfriend Harry had come to the bedroom they were sharing, he had smelled sex and thought it was for him, and she’d let him think it. She had tried to put Gendry out of her mind; she had told herself that she had merely been hormonal.

She has only seen him perhaps ten or fifteen times. Family gatherings; nights out in London on the rare occasion that all of the siblings are available and in London on the same night. He isn’t on social media but she’s caught glimpses: a lean shoulder, bare, with a bull tattoo, in the corner of one of Arya’s instagram posts. A blurry shot of him laughing and drinking. The last art gallery that featured his paintings had a black and white photograph of him and their Twitter account tweeted the picture, and she impulsively clicked on it and discarded it. Black and white is wasted on Gendry; you miss his eyes that way.

“This is a bad idea,” she says to the silence of her flat.

She sits up and goes to her marble vanity in her bathroom. The gold mirror is backlit, setting her face aglow. “Whatever,” she tells her reflection, opening one of so many minimalist jars of Korean beauty product, “it’s just dinner.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Sansa**

Whatever. It’s just dinner. Sansa stares at her reflection, surrounded by boxes of Sezáne jumpers in macaron colors that she was sent today. She is only wearing her favorite mint-green Chantilly lace bralette and knicker set because it cheers her up, and absolutely _not_ wearing it because she is getting dinner with Gendry. He’s not even going to see it. Of course it has nothing to do with him.

It’s just dinner, and she’s in a bad mood—between the news and her own private problems—and so she’s wearing lovely knickers to cheer herself up, and that is truly and completely the end of it. She holds up the chunky-knit sweater, a pale peach that will look marvelous when it slides off her shoulder and reveals the pale mint lace. She _always_ overthinks her outfits; this has nothing to do with Gendry. 

And when she spritzes on her favorite Diptyque perfume, it’s because she always wears it, not because she’s seeing Gendry tonight. He wouldn’t even notice the perfume; he would probably denounce it as bougie, because it’s not a traditionally sweet perfume. _Directional_ is more accurate. So she’s actually making herself _less_ attractive, if anything. The fact that she spent over an hour carefully blowing out her hair and creating perfect bombshell beach waves is only attributable to the new hair serum she was sent by Bumble and Bumble. She _had_ to do that because now she’s got to do a quick post about it. 

It’s just dinner. 

(And besides, Gendry was with Arya for years, and would be with her still, if Arya had not ended it. Gendry does not care about mint lace and blowouts and perfume. Gendry might as well be gay, for all of the temptation that Sansa presents.) 

She wears torn jeans to prove a point, and wavers between shoes—should she wear a pair of heels that invariably infuriate whatever man she is out with for their impracticality and height, or should she wear flat boots that make her look, per Harry, ‘like a total lesbian’? (“We wish,” Mya had snarled at him before ‘accidentally’ spilling her beer down his front and ruining his shirt.) In the end, she remembers a partnership with a new eco-friendly brand, and grudgingly wears the trainers they sent so that she can do a few quick outfit snaps. 

(Her old clothes—vintage ballet flats that are by no means trendy and carefully embroidered blouses and flouncy dresses—are in a storage bin in her closet, and as always, she thinks of them longingly before quickly recording a few Instagram stories about her newly-gifted clothes.)

(…And then she thinks of _that_ email, of the threat she received, of how she cannot go to anyone about it, and puts her old clothes out of her mind. She has no choice in this anymore.)

The clock ticks, and Sansa dons her coat and prepares to set out, trying to put the words ‘pandemic’ and ‘stalker’ out of her mind. Just to distract herself, she quickly fires off a text to Gendry. 

**_Sansa Stark: Hi Gendry! Just checking that we’re still on for tonight—no worries if you need to cancel._ **

It takes a long time for those three dots to appear. She leaves her flat and shoulders through the throngs of evening revelers, eyes trained on her mobile screen. She should have just waited until he confirmed they were still on for dinner to leave, but she is one of those people who’s always early. Even for ‘just dinner.’ 

At last: 

**_Gendry Waters: yup were on_ **

**Gendry**

**_Sansa Stark: Great—I’ll see you in a bit! :)_ **

Gendry puts away his mobile without replying—he avoids being the last one to text when dealing with the Starks. The floor of his bedroom pulses and throbs with club music, and he can hear his housemates shouting at each other downstairs in the kitchen. _You wanted this,_ he reminds himself, and he examines his appearance in the cheap, warped mirror hanging on the back of the door.

He’s done his best to make himself presentable: he’s wearing his least-faded shirt and he’s hidden his messy hair beneath a beanie. He will not be a subject of pity. He will not have Sansa cooing to her sister _poor Gendry. He looked just awful. I think he’s still not over you._ In his imagination, Sansa and Arya are in black-and-white like an old Hollywood film, talking in that weird accent that they all had in those movies in the fifties that he’s sure no one has ever had, flouncing around in feather-trimmed nightgowns and smoking with those long cigarette holders. 

He shrugs into his leather jacket. It’s ancient and worn, the leather cracking at the creases, but it was expensive and it still looks high quality. Fine, it’s whatever. This is just what he looks like. He doesn’t need stuff to make himself worthy of dinner with Sansa Stark. He's doing her a favor. He could bloody well show up in sweats and a flannel if he liked.

(Earlier, he found her Instagram out of curiosity, and watched the likes and comments pile up on her latest post about a pair of trainers. In one of the pictures, her jumper is sliding off her shoulder, revealing a delicate mint-green lace strap, and there are hundreds of comments on it, some innocent and flattering, others disturbing. _Omg want 2 fuk u,_ one said. _Honestly id rip tht jumpr off her,_ said another followed by a heart-eyes emoji. _You are the most beautiful girl in the world,_ and, _lets see them titties come on lol,_ and, _please reply to this Sansa ilu soooo much._ The worst one was unrepeatable and violent, and it—as well as the other profane ones—disappeared before his eyes, as though hastily wiped away like a smudge on a mirror.)

(He was seriously considering canceling on her—she did give him an out, after all—until he saw that comment.)

Downstairs, the air is thick. One of his housemates is draped on one of the flea-bitten sofas and she reaches out to Gendry, letting out a garbled laugh. Behind her, another one is slumped against the wall, nodding off, a needle next to him.

“Crazy, this pandemic shit, right?” she drawls. Gendry pauses before her.

“Pandemic?”

“Yeah, they like, officially declared it,” she says. She holds up her mobile.

The screen is cracked, but Gendry can still see an image of Donald Trump and a headline about the WHO. Gendry shrugs, ignoring the gnawing worry. Until now he’s more or less laughed off the virus, but a deeper part of him—the insecure part, the part that still folded his old clothes even when living in his car, the part that is secretly drawn to stability and order—is afraid.

He looks around the living room. There is nothing sterile or sanitary about this house of exile: old mattresses pile on top of each other and are littered with rolling papers and ashes, old needles and grease stains. The walls are painted frenzied streaks of cobalt and fuchsia that must have seemed vital in the clutches of a high but now just look feeble and confused. People come and go all day. It’s a hotbed for a virus.

He wanted chaos, he reminds himself. He asked for this.

“Right. Whatever. I’m out,” he says, turning from the girl. He hasn’t yet learned her name, and he doesn't plan on it.

“Careful out there,” she calls after him, “I heard we’re all gonna die.”

He traces over the shape of his new housemate’s slurred words as he makes his way to Kingsland Road, a patchwork of old industry and new bourgeoisie.

There’s no sign of imminent death here: the slick streets are packed with revelers, with chalkboard signs scribbled with little ironies and half-price draughts, with hip young parents pushing strollers. Neon turns the sky pink. The metallic scent of the wet streets, the balmy humidity of fried food, the scents of vetiver and oud: these fill his lungs and he realizes, now, what his new house smells like: skin and illness. 

Gendry slows to a stop before a defunct payphone booth. He dials the number that Sansa instructed him to, and is let in. He squares his shoulders before descending the narrow steps to blaring rock music.

He sees her at once, in a booth in the corner with a velvet curtain pulled back so that only a sliver of her is revealed. Gleaming copper hair. Smooth skin painted in jell-o green and flamingo pink by the neon lights over the booth. She’s on her mobile, and he looks at his own mobile. You can’t get a signal down here; she is pretending to be on her mobile. 

_Sansa’s lonely,_ Arya used to tell him, after fucking in the back of her car. _Like, none of those friends are real._

Only Arya could get away with talking about her family right after sex. Gendry can now remember how it felt, the oppressive humidity, the smell of sex, the feel of her skin slick against his, both of them catching their breath as she talked about her bloody family. Rickon's violence; Robb's trashy girlfriends; Sansa's loneliness. Fights she and Sansa had had recently. Sansa's latest Instagram posts. _She like used to be into, like, art and stuff,_ Arya had said one time, towards the end. _You guys could connect._

Gendry sees it now for what it was: Arya was trying one last stab at fitting him into her life. He was not loud and polished enough to really get on with Robb. He was too old to get on with Bran and Rickon. He was too poor to get on with her mum, and too tattooed to get on with her dad. Sansa was the only one left. 

Arya has always been like this: she gets these ideas in her head and doesn't let them go. For all of her insistence that Sansa lives too much in her head, Arya is pretty naive herself. Being ‘into art’ is not enough to cross the socioeconomic chasm between him and her sister.

Maybe he should just leave. But he thinks of that comment again, and something beyond himself propels him forward.

As he approaches, he now realizes why she was pretending to be on her mobile: a rangy-looking man in a hoodie is pestering her. As he gets closer, Gendry realizes the shift in Sansa. Her face is perfectly pleasant, but it is suddenly mask-like and eerie.

“Um, hey,” he cuts in, and the man harassing Sansa looks baffled at the sight of him. 

“Gendry!” Sansa blurts out, a little too brightly. She flashes a winning smile at Hoodie. “So sorry, but I haven’t seen my friend in years. It was lovely to meet you!” 

It’s all sanitized and smooth. Hoodie does not look happy, but Gendry has spent quite a lot of time interacting with people who have yet to realize that they cannot always get what they want, and he stares easily at Hoodie. Was this the man who left _that_ comment, or are there more? 

“Got a problem, mate?” he asks calmly, but Hoodie just stares at him before turning away at last, and Gendry slides into the booth across from Sansa. 

There is an uncomfortable silence, and Sansa is not looking at him. 

“Thanks,” she says sheepishly. “Usually my followers are young girls who want to talk about body glitter, but every now and then—“

“—Right,” Gendry says quickly. “Price of fame,” he adds, and he almost catches her face falling, like she’s been stung.

He is at war with himself: he does not want to feel bad for Sansa Stark. “I mean, an unacceptable price,” he continues, and she looks up in surprise. She is peering at him intently, and Gendry has never been much good with attention. Plus, she’s fucking beautiful. She’s like those flowers that trap insects; her beauty is her weapon, and he is just a man, after all. 

His mouth waters when he glimpses that mint bra strap again, and he looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Fuck, the world’s fucked up, isn’t it?” he finally blurts out, because between Hoodie and Donald Trump and his needle-ridden housemates and his wasted life, there really isn’t much to say about it. He has always keenly felt the separation of how things should be and how things are: Sansa shouldn’t have to fend off strange men, but the reality is that she does. He shouldn’t go to bed hungry, but he has for as long as he can remember. 

“I never used to think so,” Sansa admits, and when she picks up the drink menu, he realizes her hands are shaking. She is rattled, and now that the danger has passed, her facade is trembling. “I think I need something strong,” she adds with a tense laugh as she scans the menu. 

When the waitress comes, they order straight whiskey, and hold off on food. Later, Gendry will name this as the first mistake. 

The second mistake is made after the waitress comes back with the whiskey.

“Hold on a moment,” Sansa says, stopping Gendry from clinking his glass against hers. She takes out her mobile. “The lighting is perfect.” 

“Do you do everything with an audience?” he blurts out, and she freezes, mobile in hand. They regard each other over their whiskey glasses. _I said what I fucking said,_ he thinks, and then he sees the tremor in her hand again, and he swallows. “I mean, don’t you ever want privacy?” He tries to soften it, and he can see her neck flushing. 

“This is my job,” she says with that fake smile.

“You don’t have to turn your entire life into your job,” he counters. Why can’t he just shut up? 

“Except I do,” she says tightly, and she snaps a picture of their raised glasses. 

Here’s the mistake, because up until now, he could have salvaged it: she puts down her mobile and they raise their glasses, and over their whiskey glasses their eyes meet again. _Sansa’s lonely,_ Arya used to say, and Gendry thinks, _no, Sansa is scared._

He knows the space between how things should be and how they are. He knows the world is a fucked up place. He knows when he should just shut up and mind his own business—except he doesn’t, because he also knows that things can be shaped and repainted. He knows that he bends the metal to his will and he mixes the colors. He knows that nowadays, he answers to no one but himself. He knows that he occupies reality; he is no dreamer. 

“Your hand’s shaking,” he says bluntly. “Seems like a fucked up job to me.” 

Their whiskeys are still raised, and their fingers briefly brush. His skin crackles like he has grazed lightning. Sansa’s eyes are bright like she’s upset. 

“You lived in your car for a year,” she counters calmly, sweetly. “You let my sister demean you for years and now that she’s left you, you’re still obeying her orders. That seems pretty fucked up to me.” 

The profanity sounds like Latin on her tongue. Academic, sunlit, taken from yellowed pages. He forgot the ’Stark Snark’ as he called it. It stings. 

“You’re right. I’m sort of an expert on fucked up,” he replies, just as calmly, and their fingers brush again. “Cheers.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Sansa**

"Cheers."

Gendry says it dryly, because he's used to not having much to celebrate, Sansa thinks. In her world of influencers, you are constantly supposed to highlight how 'blessed' you are, how 'grateful' you feel, if only to undercut those who would point out that your life is full of blessings. You are not allowed to be too unhappy, too discontented, when a French label has just sent you a box of jumpers that cost most people's rent. You must constantly be toasting to your good fortune, identifying that you of course do not deserve this. Celebration must be ritualization.

But right now, celebration feels more like a quick, sharp 'thanks, mate' to the universe— _thanks for not fucking today up for me_. The whiskey slides down her throat, burning a trail, so different from the highly Instagrammable rosé she usually drinks.

"I'm sorry," she blurts out immediately, because she cannot tolerate the idea of someone being mad at her. Her voice is raw from the whiskey, and Gendry is slumping back in his seat, regarding her with arched brows. "I only said that because I don't understand why you let her boss you about like this. It always made me sad to think of it."

"S'my choice," he says simply with a shrug.

"But why do you want that?"

"Harry bossed you around," Gendry counters, and it's odd to hear Harry's name said with such total confidence, like Gendry knows him really well though Sansa cannot remember them even being in each other's presence more than a few times. Arya must have talked to Gendry about Harry; Sansa wonders what Gendry thought of him. "At least Arya's hot," he adds, and he waves to the waitress to come back to them. 

"Harry was very handsome," Sansa insists, neck flushing.

The waitress pauses at their table, and without looking at each other, they order another round of whiskey. 

There's an air of shameful indulgence now, because the game is over. There are no more pretenses of propriety or politeness, and Sansa feels like she is spinning out on black ice. When there is no more decorum, and there are no more rules, what is left? She does not know how to have a conversation that is not varnished with good manners, and as the waitress saunters off she tries desperately to haul the conversation back into neutral, safe, pleasant territory; territory in which Gendry cannot do anything that makes her skin prickle. "Anyway, I'm sorry, truly. I didn't mean—"

"—Whatever, Sansa," Gendry scoffs, waving his hand. "You meant what you said. It's alright." He toys with the empty whiskey glass. "I think it's the only time you've ever said a real, legitimate thing to me. It's sort of refreshing."

Well. That stings.

She stares at him.

"If you just came here to be antagonistic, why come at all?" she wonders quietly. "Surely my sister doesn't have that much power over you."

"Don't know," he admits, to her surprise. He rolls the empty shot glass along the table thoughtfully.

The waitress comes with their second round, and this time, they merely let their glasses brush wordlessly and then toss the shot back. 

Now she and Gendry are staring at each other across the table in a heady but leveling gaze. "Guess I was curious about you," he admits, and it takes her a moment to recapture the thread of their conversation. Oh, right. She asked him why he came here tonight. "Saw your Instagram. You get some weird comments. Dunno." He takes off his beanie and rakes his hand over his short, dark hair, and Sansa watches with perverse relish.

What she says next is stupid. She will later blame it on the whiskey, and the fact that for all of the likes and comments of support that she receives, she still feels unloved and unseen. Until now. Gendry has noticed her, Gendry has wondered about her. No one else wonders about her, and maybe it's her own fault because so much of her life appears to be on display, but knowing someone wonders about you is a powerful drug, as powerful as whiskey, and it loosens her tongue. 

She can't help it. She's always been bad with secrets, and she's always been quick to reach out. 

"I was curious about you too," she admits quickly. Maybe she is a self-destructive person. She regrets the confession at once, and then at once doesn't regret it, because Gendry looks up in surprise, making her think of a startled deer in the forest. "You don't even have social media," she points out, because he's still staring. "You were this strange, unexpected, unexplainable presence in Arya's life, and you were really good for her, and probably too cool for her." Her tongue feels thick and her cheeks feel hot, and Gendry is still staring. She's not making sense. The neon brushes along his skin. "You're a tattooed artist who sometimes lives in communes and hardly ever speaks," she tries again. "Who wouldn't be curious about you?" 

"You looked me up?" His voice is casual, but he is clearly tugging on a thread that will lead to another secret, one Sansa knows she should not reveal. 

Now she is the deer, because she feels like a trap is about to spring. One of her own making, possibly. 

"Everyone looks everyone up these days. You looked me up," she points out. "How else would you have seen the comments?" 

"I'm not even going to deny it," Gendry mutters, shaking his head. "I did look you up on Instagram a few times. I read through the comments on one of your posts today. Dunno how you sleep at night, getting comments like that." 

"I don't." 

The words fly out. She is drunk. She feels like clapping a hand over her mouth, and Gendry licks his lips. She considers babbling on about how the blue light from screens is to blame and how she was just recently sent blue light glasses that have changed everything (they haven't) or how she's been using this popular meditation app that has radicalized her sleep (it hasn't) but the lies die in her throat.

"Why not just ...delete everything?" His voice is low. "Just walk away from it? It's not like you need the money." 

She says nothing and Gendry stares and her throat burns. None of the usual lies want to come out this time, not when he's looking at her like that, and she's just tired of lying, anyway. Everything about her life is a lie and when you're in front of someone who doesn't believe lies anyway, the performance feels even more frivolous. 

"We should get another round," she says at last, waving the waitress over. Gendry does not protest; he continues to stare at her. When the third round comes, he holds up his in a toast. 

"You are way more fucked up than I thought," he says, his knuckles brushing hers. "Arya has no idea."

"Let's keep it that way," she says, and they each toss back the whiskey. She wipes her mouth in a clumsy, un-Sansa move, and coughs slightly. Gendry's getting that flush to his cheeks, and the walls are tumbling down. This is dangerous, and stupid, and she is pretty sure her makeup is running. Time to run away; time to reconstruct the facade before Gendry can pull on any other secret threads. She will regroup and then leave, because the performance has ended but for Gendry to see any more of reality isn't an option either. 

So she gets to her feet. "I've got to use the ladies'," she says, but when she stands up she sways. "I'm fine," she insists at his look, and she clumsily snatches up her purse and does the singular sort of drunk walk that feels like you are running down a hill. 

In the cavernous bathroom she stares at her reflection. Her hair is mussed and her skin is flushed, her tinted moisturizer melting away, and her pupils are large. Real attraction is messy; Harry never made her makeup melt off like this. 

Just for one moment she wants something to be real. She wants, for even a few minutes, to actually inhabit the life that she sells. Sansa takes her lip stain out of her purse and blots it on her lips, mesmerized by the feeling of making yourself pretty for someone you know and not for faceless strangers. She is not Insta-worthy right now, because her waves are mussed in the wrong way and her skin is dewy in a way that she knows does not photograph well, and this is the truth: that world of 'omg GOALS' and 'yas queen' has no overlap with the real one, where she is making a sweaty fool of herself for a man who probably thinks she is ridiculous. 

_Get a grip, Sansa_. This was just supposed to be dinner, not an existential crisis. 

She wipes off most of the lip stain, and leaves the loo. 

**Gendry**

She doesn't look so steady. Gendry doesn't feel so steady himself, but he thinks of Hoodie earlier and decides she shouldn't walk into the hall with the bathrooms alone, not now that the bar has suddenly become crowded and rowdy. He gets up and pushes through the crowd. The music is getting uncomfortably loud, and as he weaves through the throngs, he hears the words _pandemic_ and _corona_ and wants to plug his ears. It's all too much, too oppressive, and he stumbles into the little side hall and draws in deep breaths as he braces his hand on the wall. So much for helping Sansa, because he feels fucked up and lost. And he can't stop thinking, _she was curious about me_ , and he wonders if all of those times their eyes met across the room it actually did feel like something to her; he wonders if all those times, it wasn't all just in his head. 

Sansa comes out of the bathroom, looking flushed and embarrassed, and Gendry straightens. It's dark here, and the blare of the Violent Femmes feels far away, like they're underwater. Her copper hair gleams bright in the neon and she smells so good, it's something verdant and lush and secret and warm. 

"Yes?" Sansa presses, and he can see her trying to fit her stupid little facade back into place, as if he didn't just watch it crack open before him. He is baffled by the audacity of it. _I see you now_ , he wants to yell at her. _Why are you trying to hide now?_

"Figured you're not in any condition to fight off weirdos," he explains after a moment. It occurs to him just how narrow this hallway is just as he watches those Atlantic eyes flick down to his chest then up again, as though she's reckoning the same thing. 

Oh. 

It has been so long since he felt this that he almost didn't recognize it. The singular moment when you realize you want someone and they want you too. It is an animal moment that makes his skin prickle. 

"Even when you're being nice, you're still a little mean," she notes. 

"I'm not being nice," he corrects softly. There is nothing nice about the thoughts in his head. Her lips are reddish; she just put on makeup just now and he registers dimly that she did it for him.

It definitely wasn't just in his head, all those times. When he was looking at Sansa Stark, she was looking at him, too. He feels it with powerful certainty, and if the music changes, he would not know. This he brands as his next mistake, because rather than getting away from Sansa Stark like a bat out of hell, he steps closer. Hears her back up. She is against the wall, looking up at him. 

But her jumper's sliding off her shoulder again, and he can't stop his gaze from flicking down to the lacy bra strap, and when he finally looks back at her face, her eyes are wide. She's not moving, not saying anything, so he tries it again. He lets his gaze linger on her collarbone, on her neck, traces along the bra strap down to the collar of the jumper where it disappears. She wore it for him; she didn't have to expose her bra strap but she wanted him to see it. 

He is not as familiar with this sort of dance. He is more accustomed to women that simply reach out and take him; he is unused to being the hunter. But he is just a man, after all, and Sansa knows how to lay her traps. When he lifts his eyes to meet hers again, her cheeks are red as her lips and her lips are parted, and he watches her rake her gaze down his jaw, his neck, his shoulder, back up again to linger on his tattoo. She did it earlier, too. "Curious about my tattoo?" he ventures cautiously. 

"No." 

"You keep looking at it." 

"No, I don't," she snaps. He can see in her face that she wants to call him out for looking at the bra strap in return, but can't bring herself to do it. "I should go home. I don't want to keep you out late." 

There it is again: sanitized, smooth, polished Sansa. Fake Sansa, Influencer Sansa. Gendry backs off in disgust. 

"Alright. We can play it that way," he scoffs. 

Part of him is humiliated. He feels grubby and desperate; what will Sansa tell Arya about this? The other part of him is infuriated. Fine, whatever. She's one of those girls that always wants attention, probably. She wants another 'stan' or whatever they're called, and he's not going to do that. If she doesn't want him, he won't fucking beg. 

Gendry turns away, seeing carnal red in his anger and embarrassment. He's going to go home, get shit-faced, and paint. Fuck Sansa Stark, fuck her stupid polished fake life. She can go be fucked up on her own. It's none of his business--

" _Excuse_ me?" 

Her tone of disbelief and sputtering outrage stops him in his tracks, and Gendry stands stock-still, not looking back. "Are you-- are you _mad_ I won't fuck you in the bathroom?" 

If she were not so drunk she wouldn't say it like that. She wouldn't say anything at all. 

"No, I'm mad that you think I'm stupid," he says. "You had your fun, you got your attention, and now you're done. That's it, right? Next time I'll just like one of your stupid pictures. Save myself some time and energy." 

"I didn't have fun. I feel humiliated and attacked," she chokes. "And I want to end it before I embarrass myself further." 

"Humiliated?" He can't stop himself from turning around again. Her eyes are bright with the threat of tears. 

"You just tore up my relationship and my lifestyle." 

"You tore up mine," he points out, but there it is again, that animalistic sense, and the fury ebbs. Is he a hunter or is she a temptress? Maybe both, he can't puzzle it out, because everything smells like her perfume and she is definitely, definitely curious about his tattoo. It's an impossible seesaw of confusion and attraction, powerful physical need and powerful pride. Her eyes flick to his neck again, a quick taste, secretive and hasty, and she quickly licks her reddened lips, and he just knows. 

It's a looping scrawl, curling in on itself, inscrutable and messy yet communicating something all the same. 

So he takes the leap because he lives by his own rules, because he is self-destructive, because he thinks the world might be burning down around him and because he really wants to see the rest of that bra. 

He's curious; that's probably what it really comes down to. He has always been curious about Sansa Stark, and he knows this. And she is curious about him, and isn't that enough? He takes a careful step toward her, watches her emotions ripple across her features as she takes that in. "Are _you_ mad I won't fuck you in the bathroom?" 

The breath she draws in is sharp. 

"This is a bad idea," she breathes as they reach for each other.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sansa**

They collide against the bathroom door, and suddenly everything is Gendry: she reaches for him and her fingers tangle in his shirt, and his forehead grazes hers. His chest is hard beneath her fingers, and he smells like smoke and whiskey and paint, and his kiss is brutal, searing, unapologetic. It knocks her head against the door just as it makes damp heat pulse between her legs like a shock. So she digs her nails into him, experimentally, and he groans into her mouth as he fumbles for the doorknob. 

"Fuck me in the bathroom," she begs against his lips, a whimper that sounds pathetic even to her own ears, but then he's pressing her against the other side of the bathroom door, the bar's music muffled through the door, and his hands are closing round her wrists, pinning her against the door, and she wonders if he ever fucked Arya like this. 

So she asks. Because everything is spinning out of control; because she hates herself; because the world's going to hell and she might as well drop the charade completely. "Was it like this with my sister?" 

He's got a knee between her legs and his mouth is on her neck, then her jaw, and his teeth graze her skin. He's got a thumb on her pulse, on her wrist, and she wonders if he registers her ever-speeding heart rate. 

"No, she never begged me to fuck her," Gendry admits. Sansa closes her eyes as his hips grind against hers; she hears him gasp at the friction and she finds herself laughing drunkenly, loosely, and louder than she's ever allowed herself to laugh before. 

"I never begged Harry to fuck me either," she says, and then Gendry's pulling her away from the door, and in a blur she's sitting on the edge of the sink, Gendry between her legs, and she's clawing at his shoulders as he pulls down her jumper, revealing more of her shoulder, running his lips along the exposed skin. And then he's fisting one hand in her hair, tilting her chin and forcing her to meet his eyes, and his grip is just shy of painful, and his other hand is on her jaw, a thumb running along it as he studies her with his artist's eyes. 

"Beg me," he breathes, and then his thumb is on her lip, smearing the lip stain down her chin, and she doesn't look away as she grazes her teeth along the edge of his thumb, his burning blue eyes watching the movement with rapt attention. "Beg me to fuck you," he orders again, his voice raw from need and whiskey and anger. 

"Please fuck me," she whispers, and then his lips are on hers again, another searing kiss that feels like it will leave a mark. He's gripping her hip with one strong hand now, the other reaching beneath the hem of her jumper, and his calloused hand runs along the tender, ticklish flesh of her middle with a light touch, in counterpoint to the almost painful grip on her hip, his forehead against hers. He lets out a hot breath as his palm finds her breast, and he rubs his thumb over one tight bud, catching her gasp in his mouth. "Please," she whispers again, as he slips his hand beneath the lace, and then his rough palm is on her skin, and this touch is so strangely intimate, so unexpectedly electric, that they break the kiss and pause. Skin to skin touch like this is harder to come back from, and neither is so drunk that they can feign having blacked out. A line has been crossed, and maybe she should have thought a little harder about beckoning him across that line, but then she thinks, _fuck it,_ and rolls her hip against his. "Please." 

"Please what?" 

For all the times Gendry was mild-mannered and polite, a little distant, a little aloof, a little self-conscious, he is now someone different, and she is aware of all the flickers of desire and contempt that she always perceived in him before; all the little pieces of resentment and longing, frustration and curiosity. She arches her back and he runs his palm over her breast again, thumb circling her nipple as he bites down on her lower lip. 

"Please fuck me." She is utterly aware of how in control and not in control she is; in submitting to him she is giving him permission, and the thought is dizzying. Surely one of them is being taken advantage of, but it's impossible to determine. 

"How?" He pinches her nipple and she hooks one leg around him, pulling him closer in a movement that is clumsy and pathetic and needy and decidedly not something she ever felt the need to do with Harry; the feel of his desire against her never made her writhe or whimper. It was mainly something sort of embarrassing, sort of amusing, sort of sweet. 

She says the words that seal her fate, because when she thinks of how she wants Gendry to fuck her, she cannot help but be curious. How has he pictured it? _Has_ he pictured it? 

"However you want," she gasps as he grinds against her again, then slams a bracing hand against the mirror behind her. She's vaguely aware of the door rattling with someone wanting to come in; they each ignore it. 

"You're so desperate for validation," he says, voice ragged, a half-scoff and half-laugh, "you won't even tell me what you want." 

Rage explodes in her and she digs her nails into his shoulders, dragging them along his back as hard as she can. 

"Fuck you," she seethes, and it feels so good to just say what she thinks, even if Gendry's now laughing at her while he bites her ear, then jaw. 

"No analytics here," he gasps as she grinds against him again, trying to unsettle him as much as he's unsettled her. "No market segmentation. You'll have to be real for once. Nothing you can sell me." 

She considers pulling back and slapping him, but his hand on her breast feels so good that instead she closes her eyes and sinks into his touch. She's wetter than she's ever been and he smells so good and her hair's a mess and her cunt is throbbing and it's much too hot in this stuffy bathroom. 

"Fine. I want you to make me come a hundred times," she says wildly, winding her fingers in his short hair, and he laughs again, against her neck. "With your fingers, with your mouth. I want you to take me home and wake up my neighbors with my screams." 

She has never asked for that, and no one's ever offered, but Gendry's lips are against hers, his forehead against hers, their skin damp with sweat, when he says, "alright, done," and unbuttons her jeans with his other hand. 

"Come on, stop shagging, there's other people in line!" someone says on the other side of the door, and Sansa lets out an exhilarated laugh. It occurs to her that she is not sure she's ever laughed during sex, but fuck, it feels good to laugh. And Gendry's artist's hand is down her jeans, slipping into her knickers, and he whispers _fuck_ when he feels how wet she is so she laughs again. Maybe she's a little embarrassed, but everything is spinning, and he doesn't seem embarrassed, just more urgent. 

"You better come fast," he breathes against her lips, "there's other people in line." 

She opens her mouth to retort, but any response dies in her throat as his palm grinds against her clit, his other hand grazing her breast in maddeningly light touches that circle her hardened peak, and then she's just whispering nonsense against his lips, begging him mindlessly for things that she's not even sure she really wants, like being fucked against the wall or thrown over the edge of her couch, or begging him to do what he wants. "I want to make you come a hundred times," he retorts, just as she shudders and peaks against his palm with an embarrassing whine. 

But it's not enough, and even though there are warning bells in her head, telling her to end it here, instead she writhes against him and begs him to come home with her, and it's either a beg or a command; regardless, he obeys. 

**Gendry**

This would not work if he weren't so drunk, he tells himself, as they stumble out of the bathroom to a long line of very pissed off people, but it's dark and chaotic and he doesn't give a fuck because he just felt Sansa Stark shudder and come against him, and he just heard her beg him to do what he wants with her, and the world might be ending so nothing matters anyway. They stumble out of the bar and into the chaos of the London night and Sansa hails a cab like the money doesn't matter, and he's just about to make a snide remark when she pulls him into the darkened back of the cab and wraps an arm around his neck and kisses him long and hard and desperate, her other hand lingering dangerously high on his leg. Everything smells like her desire and he's sure the cabbie can smell it and he kisses her back, hard, and doesn't think about the consequences of tonight. 

This is a bad idea, he thinks vaguely when they stumble out of the cab at last, in front of a converted warehouse whose shabbiness cannot hide its prestige. 

And in the doorway to her flat, before she's dropped her keys, before he's ripped off her stupid jumper and that goddamn mint green bra, there is a moment. Fleeting and brief, but nonetheless raw, and he wishes he could take it back. There is a moment where their eyes meet, where he can see she's not nearly drunk enough to excuse this, and he knows she can see he's not either, and they are both painfully aware that this is something for which they will pay later, in some way, at some point. This cannot be fobbed off as a drunken indiscretion; this cannot be excused as some embarrassing mistake. 

For all the whiskey, for all the things that have forced them to this point - there is a brief moment where they can each see that this was the plan all along. 

But Gendry's got a self-destructive streak and so's Sansa, so they each leave that blinding flash of clarity for another time and fumble for each other in the dark. Maybe they're thinking the same thing: that if they make it dirty, that makes it sordid, which makes it something they don't have to talk about, don't have to address. 

So he tells her to beg for it, and she whimpers another plea as he shuts the door and presses her against it again, but here in the darkened silence of her flat, with nothing but London traffic and the noise of their own desperate gasps, it's just a little harder to keep up that charade - just a little more obvious what they're really doing here. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Gendry**

In his hunt for a surface of the right height to put Sansa onto, he gets a better sense of her flat. It's dark, but he gets an overall impression of various stages for pictures that he recognizes from her Instagram posts: the artfully mussed bed that is always in the background of her selfies; the antique bureau staged with hipster perfumes and vintage trays that she often snaps with a moody filter to display her latest beauty purchase; the plants in woven baskets that she insists are for wellness...

And in the spaces in between, there are boxes everywhere.

Boxes of shoes, boxes of jumpers, boxes stacked up against one exposed brick wall, their sides bearing the names of very cool, very millennial brands. It's overwhelming, it's claustrophobic. It feels like a city of boxes, towering like skyscrapers around them. There's nothing 'aesthetic' about them; it makes his skin crawl. He cannot imagine living among all these boxes, but where else could she possibly put them? There is so much stuff, so many gifts that people have tossed at the altar of her beauty, that she literally doesn't have anywhere to put all of the validation and adoration that she gets.

Now that they're in the silence of her flat, he can hear her mobile buzzing, repeatedly, even over the sounds of their gasps. They make their way from the door to a slim console table that is cluttered with girly, Instagrammable objects, and he shifts her upward and onto it. She wraps her legs around his hips, the back of her head bumping into a mirror, and in the dark he glimpses his own eyes in the mirror. Her mobile buzzes again, insistently, and the girly things rattle glassily as he pushes her against the wall and the console table rocks with their movement.

"Is that all Instagram?" he asks against her neck, and he feels her swallow. 

"No, I muted Instagram," she replies, her voice a little more steady than he might have expected. 

Something is wrong. 

Maybe she is realizing how bad of an idea this is; maybe the whiskey is wearing off. It's already too late, of course—they have already been too intimate to ever recover from this—but Gendry pulls back anyway, hands still hooked around Sansa's thighs. Her makeup is smeared and her hair is wild, but her eyes are alert, and as soon as he tries to meet them, her gaze slips away. She turns her head, biting her lip. Something is definitely, definitely wrong. Maybe that something is him.

He refuses to be an object of pity, so he masters himself. 

"You want me to go?"

He drops his hands from her thighs and watches her gaze dart back to him, sees the reproach and hurt there. Sansa is complicated; he's always known this, but now he is beginning to see just how complicated she is, how thorny, how lost. 

"Fine," she says coolly, looking down again. Her mobile buzzes again and there it is again: her eyes look bright as they flick down, in the direction of her mobile shoved into her back pocket, her throat moves as she swallows, like she wants to cry, like she is upset. And then her mask slides back into place and she tosses her hair, and she's about to say something disdainful and cool, but Gendry suddenly thinks of those comments, he thinks of Hoodie in the bar, he thinks of the stacks of overwhelming boxes crouching behind them like hellhounds—

"Are you—" He doesn't even know what question he's really asking. He grapples for the words. "Are you ... _scared_ of something?" 

The question is too vague, too big, but she's looking at him again, her eyes so wide that he can see the whites go all around those Atlantic irises, and he knows he has struck truth. 

They stare at each other as her mobile buzzes yet again, trapped between her jeans and the console table. _I don't know how you sleep,_ he'd said earlier, and she'd said, _I don't_. 

In the silence of her flat, she draws in a shaking breath, and he watches her mouth quiver as she looks away again. She looks ashamed. Her lips twist into a sardonic smirk, one he did not think Sansa was capable of, and maybe it's just to staunch the urge to cry. She lets out a bitter laugh as she nods, but her eyes are still bright with the threat of tears as she looks past him, looks around her flat at the stacks of boxes, at the many stages on which she performs on command. 

"Yeah," she says in a taut voice, "a little. Don't tell anyone." She wipes at her eyes, does the little swipe that women do to protect their makeup, but of course, it is already smeared. She has not been selfie-ready since she saw him, and there's something in that thought that gives him some grim satisfaction that he will examine later. He has stripped her of her varnish, and what is beneath is dark, complex, dangerous, knotted, visceral. "I, um, sort of fucked up." 

No sweet, polished words now. She lets out another choked laugh. "It's my fault. I made a mistake, and it was _my_ mistake to make, and now I just—I just have to live with it! It's not great, but—but there it is. I'm a little scared, but it's my own fault." 

Her mobile buzzes again, and she smoothes her hair, pulls away from him, and slips the mobile out of her pocket. But she's still in front of the mirror, and Gendry can see the texts on the illuminated screen.

They are all from Harry. Texts, maybe an email. One is in all caps.

Sansa sets her mobile face-down on the console table, acting like nothing is wrong, but it's such a ridiculous ploy that Gendry cannot help but let a disgusted laugh escape. 

"You're seriously gonna pretend your ex-boyfriend isn't blowing up your mobile right now?" he scoffs, watching Sansa's jaw tense as she stares at him. "What the fuck? What mistake could you have _possibly_ made? Why is he texting you like this? Is this mistake about him, or is there something else, too?" 

Her mouth quivers again so she bites her lip. 

"No," she says thickly. "It's—it's the same mistake. Just—just the one." 

Her shame is powerful. She swipes under her eyes again, still—unbelievably—trying to save face. "Maybe you should leave," she says suddenly, pulling back from him. "I think—I think I just ruined the mood—" 

He laughs again, even though it's not actually funny, but it sort of is. They were just about to have angry, drunken sex, and she's worried that she ruined the mood. Can you 'ruin' the 'mood' at that point?

But his heart is beating hard, and he feels strangely out of breath, and Sansa suddenly crumples. She covers her face with her hands, lets out a quiet sob, and before he knows what he is doing he is pulling her close, her knees on either side of his hips again, her face buried in the crook of his neck, as he cradles her head with one hand. "Oh my god," she says into his shirt, "you must be so freaked out. I'm so sorry. I don't know why—" She halts. "Seriously, just go." 

"What'd you do?" he asks, instead of responding to her request. He is face-to-face with his own reflection, holding Sansa, chin resting on top of her head, watching how his face changes as she grips his shirt tight, pulling him closer. He is face-to-face with what he really is, when you take away the angst and the painting and the self-destructive lifestyle; he is face-to-face with his real intentions. 

Fuck it. He can't stand himself sometimes. "Never mind," he says, and he looks down at her hair, away from himself, and hastily lets her go. "You don't have to tell me. It doesn't matter." 

Sansa pulls back, looks up at him with wet cheeks. "I mean," he continues, still cringing at that glimpse he just got of himself, "it's just sex, right? I don't think either of us wants this to be anything else. We don't have to, like, trade our deepest secrets, or whatever. I don't care what you did." 

He sees both relief and hurt flash on her face. "But I can't focus with that thing going off all night," he admits, "and it's really fucking irritating to have you looking at it constantly, obsessing over whatever it is he's bothering you about."

And this is his next mistake, in a night that is just a long string of them, dominos of his personal failings all piling up to what he will do next. He bites his lip, watches her watching him. "You wanna get out of here?" 

Her eyes are unreadable now, but there's a thrill of knowing that whatever is beneath that polished surface, it's totally fucked up, and he will see it, at some point. "Out of London, I mean," he adds.

His heart is pounding again as he watches her consider the idea. "Leave your mobile," he says quickly, before she can ask more questions, before she can decide she doesn't want to, and he reaches forward and slides the phone off the table. They stare at each other as it hits the floor; Sansa flinches, but she doesn't look away. "Leave your boxes, your computer, your stupid fancy clothes. Just... fuck it all, and come spend the night with me." 

He thinks she'll take issue with his choice of words, but she just stares at him. 

"I have to be back by the morning," she says at last, and he feels a rush like heroin. He can tell she does, too, because even in the dark he can see the flush in her cheeks and can see her draw in a deep breath. "Like, first thing," she adds, but her grip tightens in his shirt, and he can feel her nails graze his skin through the worn fabric. He hopes she will dig her nails into his back later.

"Look, it's not a romantic getaway," he promises. "It's just sex," he adds, with the same carelessness that he promised himself, _it's just dinner._ "We'll be back by morning." 

"Are you saying you won't last that long?"

It sounds like such a line, and it is, but it's a relief, too. The Gendry that he has designed, one of poor choices and paint, can play this game that Sansa is now proposing they return to. It's that other game, the one in which he genuinely gives a shit about her and whatever mistake she's made, that he is afraid to play, because that would mean that who he is now is a fake, and that would mean that all of the other things that have happened to him, all of the other mistakes he has made and all of the baggage that he's got, are utterly real.

"Guess you'll have to find out," he says, the words callous and the tone careless. She pulls him in for a kiss, painful and fierce, as they hear her mobile buzz again along the floor. "Leave it," he says against her lips, "and let's get out of here." 

**Sansa**

She feels naked without her mobile. Even as they flee her flat and walk through the night back to Gendry's, to get his car, she is calculating the queued posts she has that will keep _him_ sated until she returns, that will keep the devil at bay—the devil, of course, being her own mistakes.

Picture-perfect Sansa Stark, who never makes any mistakes, is running from one mistake by making another.

Gendry pulls her along, his strides confident and fast. The night is damp, but his hand is warm, his grip strong, and his certainty is a relief. He was always so submissive to Arya—he followed her wherever she went; when she asked him to jump, he only asked how high—but he is unquestionably the one in charge here, and Sansa is so relieved at the brief reprieve (her self control is meaningless and silly in front of him, so she does not have to keep up the charade for the moment) that she doesn't even worry about the fact that this is just sex for him and that it is potentially something else for her. 

Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. She's still drunk and her head is throbbing and her mouth is dry and her eyes ache, and she feels clammy and messy from being brought to orgasm in a grimy bar bathroom and then crying in front of this man that she doesn't actually know that well. Who knows what is really happening within her heart right now? It's all a mess. All she knows is that Gendry already knows she is not perfect and he does not care; and that his chest feels hard beneath her hands and he lifted her up onto that console table effortlessly; and that with just a few words and a few touches he made her come. It's just sex, right? And it turns out she likes sex, and she is realizing that she didn't actually know that, before. 

But with Gendry, she likes sex. And she likes not being in control, she likes being a mess. Thus she allows him to pull her through London, to the dodgy street that he lives on, with no mobile and no plan and, honestly, no dignity left. 

"Where are we going?" she asks as they come to his house. His car is parked in front of the house that teems with shouts and lurid lights and pounding bass, and the headlights flash as he unlocks it. Across the car, their eyes meet. 

"Dunno," he admits. 

"Give me your mobile," she orders. "I'll figure it out on the way." 

They get into the car, which smells like paints and pot and cigarette smoke, and as Gendry starts the car, Sansa twists to look into the backseat. There's still boxes of stuff in the backseat, and a camera in its case—a good camera, too, by her estimation—hidden beneath a folded pair of jeans. When she looks back, Gendry's looking at her, brows raised expectantly. "That's a good camera," she remarks. "I was just looking." 

Gendry starts the engine. 

"Can't even go half an hour without thinking about having your picture taken," he marvels, shaking his head. 

"Can't even go half an hour without insulting me, baselessly," she counters. Maybe she's still a little drunk. Gendry's burning blue eyes slide to her. 

"Yeah, but you like it," he goads slyly, and it's a line, but it also sort of works, because heat pools between her legs and she sinks down in the seat, staring at Gendry staring at her. Her cunt clenches as she thinks about the filth he will—hopefully—whisper in her ear soon. She did not know she liked dirty talk, she did not know she wanted it, but with him she does.

"I'm not that vain," she says, letting their eyes lock. She fumbles for words that will still be lighthearted and sly, that will match this game they are now playing, while still explaining herself to him. "Seriously," is all she ends up with, and it reeks of desperation, of a need for validation that he simply refuses to give her. "It's just—I don't really have a choice now." 

Gendry is still staring at her, and she is aware that it is beginning to rain, and she can still hear the pounding bass from Gendry's house. "Are you even safe to drive?" she blurts out, because this isn't going in the direction she meant for it to go. She is not reclaiming her dignity; she is just wasting time, wasting pride. 

"Yeah, I'm bigger than you. I can handle more alcohol," he says, finally looking away and pulling away from the curb. The house grows smaller in the sideview mirror, and then they're rounding a corner and it's gone. 

"We could've just gone to your room," she points out, unlocking Gendry's mobile screen and looking for the map app. It occurs to her to look at his messages app, to see how she is listed in his contacts, to see the other female names in his mobile and see how he talks to them—is he so abrasive and so uneven with all the girls he fucks, or does he save that just for her?

"No," he says immediately, and without explanation. "It's—" he starts after a few beats, then falters and shakes his head. "Forget it." 

"Are you embarrassed?" 

"No," he says, and she knows he's being honest.

The only conclusions are that either he's worried about being interrupted—and a selfish part of her is delighted by this: the concept that he would not want to be interrupted, that he would want her all to himself—or else he's trying to protect her from some aspect of his lifestyle, which also gives her a secret pleasure that she knows is a sign that this is a bigger mistake, in a more abstract way. He just wants sex, and he wants to insult her, and feel superior to her, and yet— 

_—And yet_ he also pulled her so close, so reflexively, before he had a chance to arrange himself, to stage himself for her. _And yet_ he said yes to dinner with her; _and yet_ he kissed her like _that_ , before he had the chance or the wherewithal to stop himself.

(And yet he wants to run away with her, even if it's for just one night.)

Sansa risks a glance at him, but he's focused on navigating out of London in the inky night. His angles are cast in pale light from the streetlights, his eyes brighter and paler than they really are, and his black hair is beginning to curl slightly around the edges of his hat in a boyish way, thanks to the damp air, and he is beautiful, and complicated, and maybe a little tragic. 

(He wants to run away with her.) 

(If she's fake then he's an utter construct, and she wants to rip off his facade, the one she didn't entirely realize until now that he wears like a second skin, and reveal his secret tenderness to her. She wants to possess that which he wants, so badly, to hide. She wants to draw the truth from his pretty lips in gasps, private and uttered just for her. She wants to make him say her name like a prayer; she wants him to admit whatever it is he's hiding.)

"I know a place," she says suddenly, tearing her gaze from him. She almost feels for her own phone out of pure habit, and falters when she remembers that it's still in her flat, probably buzzing along the hardwood floor with threats to make her mistake public. But tonight that doesn't matter. She will pay for this later; tonight, she will reveal Gendry one way or the other. 

"Alright, tell me where," Gendry says, squinting at the traffic. Sansa grips his mobile; it buzzes with a news alert, and she glimpses something about the virus and about the WHO, but she dismisses the notification without reading it. 

"Go north," she says. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Gendry**

He follows Sansa's directions that she recites from memory, driving north in the inky night. They do not make conversation; his head is cleared from the whiskey but it leaves a dull ache in its place, and a drowsiness that makes it hard to drive. Sansa's perfume fills the car, covering up the oily smell of his paints and the fug of marijuana, and he wonders if, after tonight—after the romance of the mistake has faded—his car will still smell like her; if she will cling like a specter to the crags and cracks in his life; if he will find himself trying not to breathe her back in like a drug, trying not to chase glimpses of her in the corners of his vision the way he stalks his muse.

Awareness creeps in as the urgency to fuck fades. How will they re-conjure the headrush that strips them of their inhibitions? Right now she isn't a girl he wants to fuck so much as a person he knows and has known, peripherally, for some time, in capacities that make this situation wrong. He once dated her sister; she probably knows intimate details about him already, ones he's not even aware of. When they met she could not help but look upon him with an evaluating gaze, because she was meeting him as a potential soulmate of her sister. They can paint over this canvas all they want but the bumps of the old one are still there, suggesting the past in a way that mottles the present.

(What did she appreciate? What did she find lacking? What did she say, when she discussed him and his relative pros and cons, with her brothers and parents? He has wondered this at so many points before, but he has always been protected from his insecurities by his contempt for her.)

(And at what point did she look at him and become curious about him? At what point did she look at him and think of sex?)

(His defensiveness is rising, just as his need for her is returning, and he wonders just how much his desire for her is tied to his own rubbish self-esteem.)

(Is he just her excursion into bad boy territory? Is he just something she is trying on for an audience—as disposable as her blue-light glasses and her macaron-coloured jumpers, as forgettable as that brand of trainers she wore just once, all the while insisting they are the only trainers she will ever need again?)

(He is not disposable; he refuses to be.)

(Yet if he does not want her to discard him, does that mean he wants her to keep him?)

(And why does it bother him to know that Sansa is a habitual, professional liar? That her word means nothing, just poetry written in the sand, ready to be washed away? Why does he keep thinking about this?)

(It's a fucking one-night stand. Why is he turning this into a mind-fuck, too?)

"You're thinking thoughts," Sansa says after directing him onto a country road. Gendry chooses to ignore her, to grapple back some of the power that he was just beginning to let go of. He doesn't give a fuck if she tries him on or not; he just wants to fuck her and get her out of his head.

(He tells himself that she is nothing more than a name on a list, another torn wrapper in the bin, another frenzied bad decision made amid loud music and strong alcohol and bad shit on the news.)

"Where the hell are we?" he asks instead.

"My parents have a cottage here," she explains, shivering in the cold car and pulling her coat tighter around her frame. He refuses to turn on the heat, even though he's cold too, just to try and stay balanced on top of his ever-wobbling contempt. "They're almost never here, though, and there's a spare key in the garden."

Imagine having a whole house you barely use. They're near Oxford, so it's not like it's going to be some rando shack, either. If it's like anything else they own, it will be heirloom, quietly impressive, in a league far different than his own. "I can hear your thoughts," she adds dryly.

They're on a gravel road now, and Gendry wonders, with a twist of his gut, how well his tyres will tolerate the gravel. This is a worry that the Starks will never have. Their tyres will always be new.

"What a talent. You ought to market that," Gendry snarks, trying not to visibly cringe at how the gravel sounds under them. It sounds really sharp, it sounds like gravel that could strand them here if it pierces the very old rubber. He expects her to say something back—that Stark Snark—but he can feel her studying him.

"Are you nervous?" she wonders. Her voice is soft, coy, like she's in control. When did she gain control? She is not the one in control here; she's the desperate drunk girl who wants to slum it for a night with a tattooed artist.

So he pulls over, the gravel popping and clicking beneath the rubber, and turns to her after he's put the car in park. Her skin is paneled silver in the night, and he can see her sit back, slightly, as he turns toward her.

"No." He is careful to keep his voice even. "Are you?"

"No." It comes out fast. She is nervous. He lets his gaze rest on her, hoping he seems utterly cool and contemptuous, before starting the car again.

Through a curtain of budding leaves, they come to the cottage—and of course, it looks like the set for a bloody period drama, with its thatched roof and heirloom drape of wisteria over the door. It is more castle than cottage. Gendry tries to drum up something nasty to say, but of course, he comes up short. Sansa has no more control over her family wealth than he does over his own familial lack of it (not that he knows his own family, but he can't assume they had much of it, else why would they give him up?).

He will never have this kind of casual wealth, this kind of comfort. No matter what mistake Sansa has made—and she seems to think it is a bad one—she doesn't fully appreciate just how likely it is that her wealth can fix it. The people whose families have spare cottages lying around in Oxford just... don't pay for their mistakes in quite the same way.

He hears her draw in a slow breath. "I never took Harry here."

This isn't what he expected. Is she implying they are something more, that he is somehow special? He wants to tell her to cut the bullshit, but when he looks at her, her eyes are glassy again as she stares at the cottage. He hears her swallow. "I was always afraid of showing too much of my family's wealth to him. I didn't think he could handle it."

"Wasn't Harry loaded?" Gendry points out, and Sansa lets out a soft laugh.

"No. He was very comfortable, very privileged, but it wasn't enough for him. I knew from the moment we met that he was always doing math in his head, working out the numbers behind every purchase I made, every reference I made to my childhood, every sign of my dad's wealth, of my mum's inheritance."

"It's hard not to," Gendry admits. 

For a moment they are looking at each other again, and he stupidly considers asking her, again, what it is she's done. Letting her confide in him; letting her open up to him. And her eyes are still glassy, and she's looking so vulnerable, so knotted, that for a breathless moment he thinks she would obey, too.

But then she looks away, and the moment is gone, and he reminds himself that she is just another pretty mistake. "But I didn't come here to do math," he adds, rewarded by Sansa's sardonic laugh. 

**Sansa**

She can hear Gendry walking behind her, shoes crunching on the stones, as she ducks into the garden where the spare key is hidden beneath a mossy rock, a bit of silver glinting in the wet soil. She is grateful for the momentary reprieve because she needs to collect herself, to pull herself together. 

(For a moment he looked at her like she mattered; like he wanted to know her.) 

(But she reminds herself that Gendry has beautiful eyes, eyes you could drown in, and just because they look like welcome, gentle waters doesn't mean they are. He is a lad made of burnished metal and sharp edges; he has smithed his own armor and only Arya, with her blades and cunning, could ever have pierced it. Sansa, pretty in pink, does not have a chance, and why would she want to? This is just about sex, and within a few hours, it'll all be over.)

"Found it," she says, holding up the little key when she turns back to Gendry, their breaths misting in the air between them. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he stares up at the old cottage, beautiful eyes trailing over the wisteria, the crumbling stone, the history, the money. But unlike Harry, Gendry seems mostly disdainful, and when he looks at her he sees not a meal ticket but a spoilt princess, a peach he will taste then toss aside.

Whatever. It's just sex. They are using each other; it is a fair deal. 

Gendry pushes off the hood of the car and walks over to her, and her stomach clenches in anticipation, and she gives him a long look before turning and going to the front door. The lock is sticky, but eventually the door gives way, and then they are standing in the darkened entrance of the cottage, with its sloped floors and low ceilings and uneven stairs. "We can go up to my bedroom, I suppose," she whispers, then wonders why she is whispering, and then she's leading Gendry up the creaking stairs to the bedroom she associates with drowsy summer days between camps and trips, that liminal space where she didn't have anything to do or anyone to be, and could just doze in the tall grasses dotted with flowers and while away the days with fairytales and classics pawned from one of the crooked shelves that have been in her family for generations.

The bedrooms here are impersonal, meant to be sparse enough to be welcoming to guests, and only a few of her old things hang in the closet. The ceilings are low, raftered, and as they step into this sweet little room, Sansa worries that the sensual animosity between them, the only thing keeping them here, cannot survive in a room like this. She can see Gendry looking around with reluctant curiosity, like he is trying to glimpse details out of the corners of his eyes. 

The silence is yawning, so she must speak. "I used to spend summers here—"

"—I don't care," Gendry says suddenly, and he winds his hand in her hair and pulls, exposing her neck, just as he backs her against the wall. 

(But he _does_ care; she saw it in his face just now, and that she knows he is lying just makes her skin tingle all the more as his teeth graze her neck, just makes her all the more damp.) 

"Make me come again," she gasps, pushing off his beanie and winding her fingers in his black hair. It is exhilarating to know they are both lying, faking something, and she wonders what would happen if she showed him she was lying, too. 

He carries her to the bed and the mattress squeaks and groans as they tumble down, kissing messily, her legs around his hips, one strong hand gripping her hip so hard there will be a bruise later. 

The thing is, they're not drunk anymore, not drowning in the noise and fury of London traffic anymore; it is just them, here, and when Gendry pulls off her jumper, it feels intimate, not wild. She is too aware of the fact that this isn't her best angle, she is wondering what he thinks of her breasts and is conscious of how her nipples are obvious through the lace of her bra, of how her jeans have shifted down and are cutting into her hips more—does she look fat?—and how the moonlight coming in through the window is not flattering. This is feeling less and less like a mistake and more and more like a choice, one she must stumble over many hurdles to make.

Gendry is braced over her, looking down at her, and she averts her eyes, her heart still pounding from how he grabbed her. "Um, hold on," she says suddenly. "Let me just close the curtains." 

She expects him to demand why, but Gendry pulls back and sits on the edge of the bed, watching her as she awkwardly stands, self-conscious and clumsy, arms folded across her breasts, and goes to the window. The lace drapes are closed but the heavy ones are not, and maybe if it's dark she will be able to forget her body. 

"Do you have, like, a body ...thing? Problem?" Gendry asks when the room is pitch-black. His voice is low, and as awkward as her posture is. Sansa stands by the window for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the new darkness. She almost wants to laugh at his wording, but for some reason it's not funny at the moment. 

"More or less," she admits, feeling her way back to him, and he meets her in the middle, stopping her from bumping into the footboard of the bed. Her hands find his tee shirt and the hard chest beneath it, and she tries to focus on that. This particular anxiety is so inconvenient, coming out at the worst possible moment. She thinks of the emails and the texts, she thinks of what she has done, and she closes her eyes. "It's easier to forget about it when I'm drunk. Maybe there's some alcohol—"

But he cuts her off with a kiss, hands on her jaw, and for a moment her mind is blank. Not because there is anything particularly special about the kiss itself—it feels good, a little rough, his stubble scraping her chin, his forehead against hers, but it is not highly technical—but because of how he is touching her; because of the intent that she knows, with powerful certainty, is behind the kiss. She knows because she saw him with her sister: that mix of laid-back ease with unexpected strength, that fire with that gentleness. This is not a one-night stand, not really, because there is so much history between them, so much context. She has at least some idea of who Gendry is; every single time he touches her can be mapped onto what she already knows about him.

(Maybe she doesn't need to pierce his armor. Maybe she can simply make him take it off, because she knows what is beneath it.) 

"It's not a weight thing," she says against his lips, and she pauses, waiting for him to protest, but he is still. So she kisses him again, pressing on his chest and guiding him back toward the bed. He must come to her; he must lay down his blade first. But she has to coax him. 

She guides him down onto the bed, and crawls on top of him. She has always felt so uncomfortable on top—so aware of her flaws, so uncomfortable with wielding any sort of power—but in the dark, with Gendry, she is now testing her power. She straddles his hips, feels his desire, and runs her hands over his chest. Even in the dark, she can see he is uncomfortable, too. He was so submissive toward Arya, made so submissive by life, that he never wants to give up his mastery ever again. 

He rolls them over, just like she guessed he would, and she helps him out of his shirt. 

"No?" he asks at last, tossing it aside before guiding her leg around his hips again and bracing a forearm beside her head; his lips are on her jaw, and she stares at the ceiling, weaving her fingers in his soft dark hair. Her heart is pounding as his mouth traces down, and that silky hair brushes her chest, her chin, as he kisses along the soft swell of skin above the line of her bra. 

"No," is all she says, and she arches her back as he reaches beneath her to undo her bra. As he slides it off, the feathery touch of the lace making gooseflesh ripple along her skin, their eyes meet. She can just barely make out the scrawling ink along his chest and shoulders, and in the perfect silence their breathing is loud, animal, clumsy. He bites his lip and for a moment she thinks she has won, that he'll ask for more, but he bows his head, sets aside her bra, and kisses between her breasts, one hand behind her back, forcing her into a slight arch. 

**Gendry**

Everything is so fucking jumbled. Is she manipulating him, by making him play this guessing game, or is he the one manipulating her—because he wants to know more, he wants to crack the ice, because he wants to win the game that no one else has won, Know Sansa Stark, and she is finally inviting him in? 

He doesn't know, he doesn't know. For a moment she was on top, pressing him down, and he was painfully aware of how subservient he really is: a tattooed penniless artist skulking into the princess' castle for a night, a sneak scrambling over the walls in the darkness, a thief who will certainly be punished for this crime in some way or another come daylight. Obviously Sansa is no virgin and it's not like virginity really matters anymore, at least he doesn't think it does, but he still has this weird, old-fashioned sense that he is tainting her; she's fucking the stableboy in the hay for a night and maybe he'll be killed for it but she'll always bear his mark; his power exists purely in the way he can dirty her with his own coal-smeared fingers. 

(What the fuck is wrong with him?) 

(He thinks of that moment in front of her mirror earlier tonight, that moment where he saw just beyond this ridiculous way he pretends to view the world, in haves and have-nots, in power and submission, in men and women, in pure and tainted—and to how he really is, a person who hungers for beauty and sees it wherever he goes, a person who is so easily brought to his knees by an interesting woman, a person who is desperate to know and be known.) 

He runs his teeth over one hardened peak. He will not play her game; he will not ask her for more. He lives by his own rules. And when he hears her gasp, he runs his tongue over the pink bud and feels her writhe against him, and tells himself that he is the one in control here. He will not play her game. 

But then she pulls on his hair, lifting his head up, and runs her fingers along his jaw and guides him back to her for another messy, clumsy kiss—and for a moment he can just make out her eyes in the darkness. He pulls back, hovering over her, looking down at her, and watches her squirm with a hint of self-consciousness. The woman who makes a living out of people looking at her does not want to be looked at. 

And he finds himself ducking his head again and kissing her and thinking, _okay, fine, I will play your game._


End file.
